The more experienced cocktail drinkers among us are probably tut-tutting about the amateur mistake I made in drinking my first Mai Tai:

I didn’t mix the damn thing.

So, predictably, my first sip of this tropical beverage consisted of almost entirely pineapple juice.

As did my second, third, and the next dozen sips until it hit me—the rum, I mean.

How to drink a Mai Tai

Consider the peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

This delicacy consists of two spreads and two slices of bread. Disregard the heathens that add such ingredients as fruit or nuts—they have no place among us.

Imagine consuming a PBJ one ingredient at a time: taking a bite of plain bread, then alternately spooning jelly and peanut butter into your mouth.

(Some of you may now be thinking “Hey, that sounds like an amazing idea!” You may stop reading here.)

Such was the experience of drinking my first Mai Tai: each ingredient separately, mixing only in my stomach.

My second Mai Tai I approached with much more wisdom and slightly more inebriation.

Equipped with the power of Google, I was prepared to properly experience my tropical drink in two ways:

Slowly pulling up the straw as I sip, gathering each ingredient into my mouth.

Mixing with the provided straw and drinking it as any other cocktail.

Method #1 was interesting, as I got to taste the component flavors before mixing them in my mouth, but after three sips I decided that, while a novel experience, it was too much effort to put into drinking at a tiki bar.

And yes, it tastes much better mixed. Arnold’s Mai Tais aren’t the top-shelf beverages that you’ll see at Duke’s or the Royal Hawaiian, but it’s got a great balance between flavors—rum and juice coexist in harmony at Arnold’s.

Maybe these things aren’t just pineapple juice, after all.

And that’s when my face started to tingle.

This article is part of our ongoing series “Finding Waikiki’s best Mai Tai.” Also check out part one and part two.